


play that riff again

by forochel



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Band, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 15:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2353103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forochel/pseuds/forochel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An AU inspired by <a href="http://forochel.tumblr.com/post/77069945595/whatdidyoudosaturday-au-after-kicking-out-the">this gifset</a>. </p>
<p>Whilst rushing for a meeting one day, Harry runs across the solution to his band's main problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	play that riff again

i.

Sod's Law being what it was, the Northern Line entrance closest to Euston Road was closed for quote unquote engineering works. Harry hurried, muttering unkind things about TfL under his breath, through the corridors of King's Cross -- wide, smelling faintly of Maccy D's, and heaving with tourists. He veered around the usual gaggle of French tourists standing in the middle of the bloody aisle, and hurtled down the decline that led to the open, cavernous space that also housed the new entrance to the Northern, Victoria, and Piccadilly lines. That same decline, Zayn had once told Harry, had featured in 28 Days Later, which was a cheerful thought to have as one was rushing for a meeting with terrifying label executive numbers one through three about their missing guitarist.

Ducking around the clump of schoolchildren laden down with bags -- back to school from Christmas hols, probably --  Harry, being the seasoned Londoner he was now, extracted his Oyster card from his back pocket. He cut in front of the middle-aged ladies rummaging around in their bags for theirs -- desperate times called for desperate measures, after all. He went through the gantry right on the heels of the well-heeled businessman without giving the barriers a chance to close and down the escalators at full-tilt, blessedly without having to hiss "excuse me" at any tourists refusing to stand on the right, and right through the labyrinthine tunnels that would lead, eventually, to the south-bound platform for the Northern line.

As with these things, Harry heard the music long before he saw the busker; an annoyingly familiar riff echoing through the tunnel up to him. He finally hit the crossroads between the lines and sure enough, there was a boy standing against the wall, acoustic guitar slung round himself, amp and open guitar case in front of him. There was a decent collection of change in there, and not all pennies either. Harry wondered if the busker was that good, or if he'd just been working since the early morning rush.

He couldn't afford to stop and listen, really, niggling riff or not, but then the busker opened his mouth and started to sing. Harry was going to be late, but his feet weren't listening to him. He stayed rooted to the spot, because this boy with a bad dye job had a sweet voice with a really interesting husk to it, and because this boy with a bad dye job had started performing to Harry, which was doing inadvisably melty things to his insides.  

Harry was going to be insanely late to the meeting, but he couldn't help but stay through one, two -- no, three songs, including one in which what Harry thought might be fingerstyling had been employed by this boy with a bad dye job. By this Irishman with a bad dye job, as Harry found out when he dropped a tenner into the guitar case.

"Oh, cheers, mate!" The busker said, sounding pleasantly surprised.

"You were brilliant," Harry told him, and then blushed hotly. "I mean. What are you doing here?"

He'd been expecting something along the lines of "oh, I'm at the conservatory and am merely wowing London's commuters in my spare time", but the busker laughed and shrugged. "What anyone comes to London for, I suppose. Fame and fortune."

"Oh," said Harry, shifting uncomfortably. Their band wasn't exactly O2-famous yet, but they'd all had to get used to being occasionally snapped while on the Tube. "Well, um, how's that going?"

He flinched at his own rudeness, but thankfully it was taken generously enough. "All right, I suppose. I've got a little gig down in Vauxhall alternate nights, but I like playing here too. It's nice and warm, and sometimes I get a tenner," and then he winked.

Flustered, Harry reflexively checked his watch and said, "Fuck!" in horror.

"Late for something?" asked the busker.

"Yes, fuck," said Harry, "I'm so sorry -- I."

"Hey, no problem," said the busker easily. "Thanks for listening."

"My pleasure, uh. Vauxhall, was it?"

"Yeah, it's The King's Arms -- original name, I know. I'm playing tonight, in fact! The name's Niall, by the way."

"Harry," said Harry. "And I've really got to go, Niall, sorry."

"Bye, Harry," Niall smiled. He really did have the loveliest smile, Harry thought hysterically as he ran off.

*

The ride down to Bank was interminable, not least because Harry had managed to get on the North-bound train whilst his head had still been turned around by Niall, and had only realised when they'd pulled in at a station and looked up as the conductor announcing 'Kentish Town Station' had penetrated the daze he'd been in. Harry had leapt out of his seat and ran out the doors and across the platform, hopping impatiently for the next train back down towards Bank, and fidgeted anxiously in his seat all the way down.

When he'd finally arrived at Bank, he burst out of the station and hailed down a black cab, forgetting entirely about London's nasty habit of having one way roads and the weirdest roundabout driving routes, and so arrived at the label's offices exactly half an hour late.

"Disappointing, Mister Styles," Simon intoned, as Harry fell breathlessly through the conference room door.

"Yeah, Mister Styles," Louis said, sing-song. "What could possibly have held you up?" He was sprawled in a rolly chair, legs stretched out before him and feet propped up on the table. Harry wondered very briefly if he could get away with pushing Louis off his chair; Louis only really needed his arms and hands, after all. he could totally sit at a wheelchair and play the keyboard.

Zayn and Liam were sitting slightly more sedately in other chairs, across the wide, walnut expanse of the conference table. They were giving him questioning looks too. Zayn had a notepad in front of him, page already filled with caricatures and ink splotches in the web between his thumb and his index finger.

"Sorry!" said Harry. "I um, I accidentally got on the North-bound at King's Cross instead, because ..."

"You are such an idiot, Haz," Louis interrupted with delight. Why they kept him around, Harry did not know.

He also wasn’t entirely sure "I got caught up listening to a beautiful busker with an adorable voice and crazily good guitar skills" would go over well, except -- except.

"Well, I think I've found us a replacement guitarist," Harry grinned. "And you wouldn't believe where."

*.

"Do you think Simon's ever been south of the river before?" whispered Liam.

"Of course I have, young Liam," scoffed Simon from behind them. "I, too, was once young and liked venturing into the dodgier bits of London."

"That's not entirely fair, though, is it," Zayn put in thoughtfully. "I mean, the Tate Modern's south of the river, and the Globe, and bloody Richmond Park ..."

Harry tuned his merry band of idiots out and turned his attention to the little stage area catty-corner from the bar. Black drapes hung on a railing attached to the exposed brick wall, and were backlit by parcans set on the stage. The stage itself was all in darkness, except for the spot of light on an empty stool standing behind a microphone stand and music stand. A guitar that he recognised with a thrill of something stood in a stand next to the stool.

Pushing back his chair, Harry stood up abruptly.

"I'm going to get another drink, you lot want anything?"

"What, already?" asked Liam. He was still nursing his pint.

Harry shrugged. "Don't fancy having to get up in the middle of a set, you know?" He shifted uncomfortably; Louis was giving him a piercing look. "So what do you want?"

"I'm all right," Zayn said, looking around. "Lads? Simon? No? You're on your own, then, mate."

Harry shrugged again, hoping to pull a cloak of diffidence around him, to mask the way his heartbeat had picked up at the mere sight of that bloody guitar. It was fucking ridiculous. He couldn't tell if he hoped he'd meet Niall at the bar, or -- well, no, because he'd just give it all away and he didn't want to put Niall off his game.

The coast was clear, and Niall only just walked back onto stage as Harry was settling down with his new pint.

"This our man, then?" asked Louis. "His hair's awful."

"Shut up." Harry pinched his thigh, before Simon gave them all a quelling look.

Niall lifted his guitar out of the stand and settled down onto the stool, clearing his throat into the mic experimentally.

"Oh good, it's on," he said brightly to a scattering of laughter. Someone whooped and shouted something indistinct. "Yeah, ta’ Paddy, your support means a lot to me."

"Paddy?" Louis asked incredulously in an undertone. "Could you get any more Irish?"

"Shut up," Harry hissed, and then Niall chose to launch straight into 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', so Louis did, thankfully shut up.

He shut up even more, were such a thing possible, when Niall segued into the opening bars of 'More Than A Feeling', before breaking off in a high, infectious cackle. The pub crowd obediently laughed back, Harry amongst them.

"So." Niall leaned into the mic, and Harry unconsciously leant forwards on his elbows as well, face cupped in his hands. "Next we're going to take a leap forward in time with a little Bowie."

"What," Zayn said blankly. Simon raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

A hush spread out over the pub as Niall started picking out the iconic melody line, singing 'it's a godawful small affair' raw and aching over the doubly melancholic loneliness of the solo guitar. Harry wished very, very hard that he could get up on stage and sing harmony for Niall -- it would be so beautiful. And then Niall struck a chord, hard on the heels of 'hooked to a silver screen', and Harry sort of lost himself a little bit in the music and watching Niall play, the way he lifted his jaw to hit the notes; Harry’d bet good money Niall had once been in chapel choir. It was all over too soon, Niall finishing the song off with his head bowed over his guitar.

The crowd started clapping, but then Niall looked up, and there was a glint in his eyes -- not tears, Harry didn't think; it looked more determined than anything. Niall took a deep breath, and then started playing something fast and complicated and --

"That's not Led Zeppelin, is it?" Zayn asked disbelievingly.

Then Niall started tapping his foot against the floor and singing, and -- "Yeah, mate, it is," Liam said. "Wow, I really hope your guitarist doesn't fuck it up, Haz."

Harry curled his fingers around the table's edge. His guitarist; it was awfully presumptuous, but he did feel a sort of responsibility for how Niall did. Why did Niall have to choose a Zeppelin song tonight of all nights? The crowd seemed really into it, though -- of course they did, what with Niall being the way he was, shining head bent over his guitar, occasionally looking up to flash a cheeky grin into the darkness beyond the stage.

"FUCKIN ACE, NIALLER," someone -- presumably Paddy -- yelled, obviously three sheets to the wind.

Niall did stumble, here and there and increasingly towards the end, obviously struggling to split his attention between the words and his fingers. But the crowd was understandably forgiving, and bore him through their cheering and whistling through to the end.

Simon put his glass down with a clink. "Well," he said. "He's definitely got some stage presence."

"Stage presence?" Liam demanded. "Bloody hell, did you see --"

"Right then!" Niall crowed into the mic, almost shouting over the noise of the crowd. "As you might be able to tell, I'm Irish, my name's Niall, and my fingers are fucking tired. I love me some Dubliners, this is my third fucking set, and here's my last song of the night!"

"Oh no," Simon said, but his mouth was twitching at the corners.

The crowd was laughing and cheering, and Niall launched into a rousing performance of 'The Sick Note'.

 

*

"You came!" Niall smiled, and it was as beautiful as it had been that afternoon. Harry was quite possibly the slightest bit tipsy.

"That was amazing!" Harry told Niall happily. "You were amazing!"

"Ach." Niall rolled his eyes. "I have to tell you a secret," and he threw an arm around Harry's shoulders, pulling Harry into his sweaty embrace. Harry didn't even mind. "I saw you at the bar, before that last set."

"Oh?" Harry ducked his head and looked up through his eyelashes at Niall. Or tried to, at least. Sometimes, he cursed his height.

"Yeah," Niall ducked his own head too, this time. "Might've been trying to show off a bit there with the Zeppelin. Fucked up at the end, though."

Harry broke out of Niall's loose grasp and took him by the shoulders, shaking him lightly. "No! yYu were amazing, and my band were amazed, and Simon was amazed, and -- oh. um."

Niall looked up, raising his eyebrows. “Your band?”

“Yeeee-ah,” Harry drew out, searching for words. When they came, it was in a torrent. “That thing I was late for, this afternoon, it was actually a meeting about our guitarist and, and we needed a new one and then I chanced upon you and it was like, I don’t know, fate, and they all came tonight because it was urgent, and I wanted them to hear you, and do you want to meet them? And, uh, Simon. He’s an exec from the label?” He shifted his weight from foot to foot as he watched Niall think about it; Niall’s face had gone curiously blank.

The silence between them stretched uncomfortably, before -- “Sure, why not?” Niall said, shrugging.

Harry had known him for all of half a day, but this reserve seemed to him unusual. It set him off-kilter as he led the way back to the table, where the lads were thankfully still seated and chattering on about the Manchester derby being projected onto the black stage drapes. They shut up one by one, though, as Harry and Niall approached. Harry wiped his hands against his jeans, suddenly nervous. He turned around to introduce Niall to the band, but stopped short at the gobsmacked look on Niall’s face.

“That’s Zayn bloody Malik from One Thing!!” Niall said. “Fuck, Harry -- Harry Styles?” He looked from  Zayn to Harry and back again, eyes saucer-wide.

Harry stared at him, at a loss for words and something a little like jealousy twisting uncomfortably in behind his sternum. Louis, thankfully, filled in the gaps with his gasping laughter, knocking sideways over into Liam’s space. Liam grabbed hold of him instinctively, but was looking at Zayn, who was looking ... amused. Even Simon was smirking silently. There was nothing funny about this situation at all, in Harry’s opinion.

“So you do know us,” Louis got out through his spasms of laughter. “But you didn’t recognise our dear Harry?”

Niall grimaced apologetically at Harry. “You had a hat on,” he said. “I couldn’t recognise you without the ... the hair.”

“Right,” said Harry. He didn’t point out that he wasn’t actually wearing a beanie right now. “That’s understandable, I suppose.”

“Don’t mind him,” Louis said lightly. “He’s just sore about not being recognisable enough. Our Zayn does have quite the face, doesn’t he?”

And then Niall flushed, which wasn’t helping Harry’s completely unfounded feelings of jealousy at all, and said, “I’m sorry, mate,” to Zayn. “But uh ... you’re basically the definition of the hot bassist.”

Harry wasn’t entirely sure what his face was doing at this point, but it definitely had Zayn smirking at Harry, instead of the usual bashfulness Zayn reacted to comments with.

“Right,” Simon said meaningfully. It was apparently time to get down to business. “Well, Niall, would you like to pull up a chair? My name is Simon and I’m a representative from the label. We’d like to make you an offer.”

****  
  


*

Niall hadn’t jumped at the offer that night, disappointingly enough. He’d just cut a look sideways at Harry after Simon had finished his ‘terms and conditions’ spiel and said thanks very much but he’d need some time to think about it. Simon had smiled professionally terrifying smile number #5 and told him yes of course he understood, and given Niall his namecard.

And then there had been radio silence for five whole days, which Harry had spent alternately writing new songs and hounding Simon for news.

On the third day, Simon sighed exasperatedly, folded his arms, and leaned back in his chair. Harry prepared himself for the undoubtedly devastating question to come.

“You’re very invested in Niall coming onboard, Harry,” Simon said. “Why is that?”

Harry squirmed in his chair. It was as though Simon chose the most uncomfortable, squeakiest guest chairs in the world. “I just feel like he’s the right one,” said Harry. “For the band and our music.”

He endured Simon’s survey for a few long minutes before Simon said, “Well, as much faith as I have in your artistic sensibilities, Harry, there isn’t much I can do about getting Niall on board.” He paused. “Or, well, I suppose there is, but that would be starting him out on the wrong note, wouldn’t it?” Simon waited for Harry to nod before continuing. “And now I suggest you do something musically productive and not bother me till I contact you, am I understood? I am far too busy to entertain your inane questions.”

“Yes, Simon,” Harry muttered, and slunk away with his tail between his legs.

He’d bothered his bandmates in the studio, after that, rolling about on the floor and sighing gustily at intervals.

“We need a guitarist,” Harry said for the umpteenth time, on the fifth day, as they tried to work out one of the melodic kinks in a song, working title: The One With The Spangles In. “Just ... we need someone with a new ear for this. WE NEED A GUITARIST.”

“Saying it loads of times won’t make it come true, Tinkerbell,” Zayn said.

“Fuck you,” said Harry, and sat up eagerly when Simon came into the recording booth, phone in hand. “Simon! Did he say yes?”

Simon smiled and stepped aside to reveal Niall, who had a guitar slung over his back and another, in a flight case, hanging from one hand.

“Oh my god, Harry,” Liam said in hushed tones. “You are Tinkerbell.”

It was probably testament to how weird they'd always been that Simon just said, "And on that note, I'll leave you to get acquainted. Try not to scare him off," and left.

"Sorry about that," Liam said quickly, getting to his feet and sticking his hand out like they were actual, real adults. "Hi, thanks for joining the band, I'm Liam and Harry isn't actually a fairy."

Niall put the flight case down and shook Liam's hand, straight-faced, before his face crinkled up in a big, breathtaking smile. "Thanks for having me, guys. and I'm not too sure about Harry, really." He tipped a wink at Harry, who felt his cheeks burn, and laughed. "I mean, I meet him in the Tube one afternoon and then I get invited to play for One Thing that evening? It's got to be some sort of magic."

"Just a ... a twist of fate," Harry said, and got flailing to his feet too. "You've got two guitars?"

"Oh!" said Niall, and then he patted his guitar cases fondly. "Yeah, I didn't know what we were actually going to do today, but I thought I'd better bring my electric and other bits of gear as well, in case you wanted ... that." He ended a little lamely.

Harry closed his mouth, looked around at the others, and triumphantly said, "I told you we needed a guitarist!"

****  
  


*

It quickly became evident that they hadn’t just needed a new guitarist; they’d needed someone exactly like Niall.

It was evident in the way he could be found squashed up with Zayn and Liam on the sofa, Liam beating out a rhythm with his sticks and Zayn humming a bassline as Niall noodled around with a riff on his guitar. The way Niall stood, hip cocked, guitar slung across his chest -- so much like that first day Harry had seen him -- next to Louis at the piano as they worked out a bossa nova improvisation on the theme of their ‘beach mojito song’. The way Niall had insisted on calling it the ‘beach mojito song’ and on giving it more of a bossa nova flavour, because: “It’s about wooing a girl on a beach! Shouldn’t people listen to it and be able to imagine lying on a beach and drinking a mojito while your mate’s making a fool of himself over this bird?” -- and the way they’d all capitulated, because it made Niall look so happy and proud, and they’d all instinctively wanted him to stay forever.

“I like him,” Zayn told Harry quietly, as they lay propped up on their elbows over Harry’s draft book of lyrics. Niall, Liam, and Louis had colonised the sofa; Louis’s keyboard taking up his and Liam’s laps, and Niall with his guitar half-perched on the sofa arm. they were talking softly amongst themselves, working out the kinks in some harmonies for ‘song about eerily identical hotels’.

They wrote like this, most of the time; Harry would write the bare bones of their lyrical content, and then Zayn would come in and change a word or phrase here and there, prod Harry into shaping the words better around his intended meaning. Or Zayn would bring a drawing, a series of sketches, a rough comic draft, to Harry, and say “I want you to write something about this,” and Harry would do his best.

Harry’s pencil went skittering halfway across the book, and the lead splintered against the page. The only thing stopping him from, oh, stabbing the jagged ends of lead into Zayn’s face was the fact that Zayn’s shoulder was shaking with laughter against his own, and that Zayn was looking at him, impossibly fond. Harry said, “don’t be cruel,” and knocked his forehead against Zayn’s.

“You’re too obvious,” Zayn whispered back. “But, really, I do like him. I’m glad you found him.”

Flopping down, Harry turned to rest his cheek against his lyric book and look mournfully up at Zayn. “I know. I am too.”

Zayn ruffled his hair. “You’re already writing a song about him, aren’t you?”

“No,” said Harry. “How dare you assume these things.”

Zayn threw his head back and laughed, eyes crinkling in the corners. It was insupportable, so Harry pushed himself back up and flung himself at Zayn, who shouted, “Whoa!” as Harry bowled them both over. They went rolling and tussling and laughing across the carpet, ignoring Louis’s cheering and Liam’s chiding, till Harry, through the judicious use of his elbows and an in-depth knowledge of Zayn’s ticklish spots, gained the upper hand. He sat, proud and grinning, atop Zayn, and turned to face their audience, pumping his fists into the air.

It was only then that Harry noticed Niall looking at them, that curious blankness in his face again, and felt something turn over, sour and sad, in his chest.

*

Louis made them bond through enforced trips down to the pub every other night for dinner. It had ever been this way: Louis taking point on the band’s welfare, running interference with their agents and the label’s contingent of handlers. Things between Nick and him had been the first to go sour, long before even Liam, whose lifestyle had -- at the start -- been most different from Nick’s. The rest of them had been abysmally slow at learning to see Louis as a sort of social barometer, and only really woke up during the days of Nick’s erratic behaviour, very near his final disappearance.

In the case of Niall, though, the Louisian Social Barometer seemed to indicate sunny days ahead with little chance of rain. They now knew, over several nights of fish and chips, an assortment of pies, and gammon and eggs, all washed down with a few pints of beer, that Niall was very proud of Ireland, had a brother and divorced parents, and was very fond of his assorted small relatives. Louis and he had spent one night memorably exchanging stories about tiny girl relatives, while Zayn inserted dour one liners about what would happen when said tiny girl relatives grew up to become teenagers. Harry and Liam, having been saddled with older sisters, hadn’t had much to contribute.

They talked, inevitably, about music too. The music they were making, their musical influences; this way they learnt about Niall’s love for swing and jazz and Niall learnt about Liam being a Phil Collins in the making, vis a vis Liam singing a little bit of Fly Me to the Moon in response to Niall’s spiel about the 1920s.

“I’d prefer Dave Grohl, thanks,” Liam said, and Louis had laughed.

“You should be so lucky,” said Louis, tugging at Liam’s hair.

“I love Elvis too, his sort of music,” said Niall, cutting straight through the impending tussle.

Zayn sat up straight at that. “Two words for you, Niall: Fats. Domino.”

That turned into a lengthy digression into the history of rock ‘n roll, Zayn literally shaking Liam by the shoulders at one point, and much abuse of the pub’s free Wifi, courtesy of O2.

“We should do a jazz album,” said Liam. “Just mix it all up. Swing and latin and big band and acid.”

“Next one, Payno,” Louis said fondly. “Focus.”

Harry turned back to Niall. “You didn’t play any jazz that night, though.”

“Well,” Niall shrugged. “I like all sorts of music, really. Indie rock, folk rock, music with a little more punk. Music with a little less punk. You know Stornoway, yeah?”

“No,” said Harry ruefully. “Sorry.”   

Niall just looked delighted by all of their existences. “No, that’s brilliant! I love it when people don’t know bands. I’m going to make playlists for each of you,” he said. “For you to listen to while we’re touring.”

“Oh, yes?” asked Louis, eyebrows quirking in curiosity. “And are these going to be about us?”

“No, it’s going to be stuff I want you to listen to. Or maybe both. Zayn’s probably going to get lots of Usher if I do the second one, though,” Niall said, collapsing into giggles.

Zayn just looked lazily pleased. “Sounds about right to me.” And then he kind of gave Harry a look, like he could tell Harry was stewing in his corner of sadness. It was a look that said, Get with it, man! Harry made a note to Google Stornoway when he got home, as well as ways to hide a body. Zayn might’ve thought he was being helpful, but really, he was about as helpful as lemon juice in a papercut.

“I used to think you were really humble,” Niall was telling Zayn. “But that’s all lies, isn’t it?”

“You should ask my girlfriend,” Zayn retorted, and Niall burst into delighted laughter all over again.

Liam laughed, too. “She’s terribly intimidating, Niall, don’t do it.”

“Yeah,” Louis chimed in. “Show the man her scary face, Zayn, go on.”

Zayn shook his head, but got his phone out anyway, swiping quickly through his gallery. Harry leaned over Niall’s shoulder to look too, acutely aware of how close their faces were and Niall’s hot, beery breath. Hana really did have an intimidating scary face; she was sweeping Zayn a deeply unimpressed look in the photo from behind a half-wound headscarf, eyelashes lowered to half-mast and painted mouth in a curved bow of discontent.

“What did you say to her, man?” Niall asked, huffing out an amused breath.  

Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, Zayn said, “Um. She probably wasn’t very happy that I was taking a candid before she’d finished...” He gestured meaningfully at his head.

“Oh.” Harry asked, sitting back fully in his seat. “Should we even be looking at this, then?”

Zayn looked down at his phone and tucked it away in his pocket. “I don’t know. She let me show it to Liam and Louis before. But anyway, Niall, that’s Hana. She’d probably agree with you, to be honest.” And then he gave Harry another look over Niall’s head, like the mere fact of his having a girlfriend would cause Niall to throw himself into Harry’s arms.

Niall had a thoughtful look on his face, though. Harry really wished he knew what was going on behind it.

*

A few days later, Niall was picking out the mournful melody line of the pretentiously named ‘Threnody in C minor’ on his guitar, fucking around a little bit with variations on the chord progressions, when he stilled the strings with his right hand suddenly. They were alone in the studio; Zayn had gone out for a smoke break, and Liam and Louis had gone to make sure he only had one. Niall waited till Harry was looking up at him before he asked, “Is this about someone in particular?”

“Oh,” Harry rolled his eyes and sighed. “It’s our revenge song about Nick.”

“Nick?”

“Our old guitarist,” said Harry shortly.

Niall’s chin raised, as did his eyebrows, and his mouth formed around a silence ‘ah’. “And you lot wrote a ... dirge about him?”

“Yeah, we thought it’d be funny.” Harry laughed a little, keeping his eyes on his sheet music. “I, um, we were flatmates before he just ... upped and went, and I was so angry I wrote the lyrics in one night and showed them to Zayn. Then Louis said it’d be good for us if we just wrote a whole song about it, and Liam thought it’d be funny if we made it, like, a dirge. Like, a cheeky little twist, to say that Nick’s dead to us.”

The other three had come back in during Harry’s explanation, and they all laughed.

“He was such a wanker,” added Louis. “Disappeared all the time on tour, turned up late to sound check, didn’t turn up for recording. We never actually knew where he was.”

“He’s in Amsterdam now, actually,” Zayn said.

“How do you know that?” Harry asked, a trifle accusatorily.

Zayn sighed. “He texted me the other day. Something like ‘Heard you got a new guitarist. No hard feelings!’”

Louis groaned. “What a dick. We’re well rid of him, I tell you.”

“I hate him,” said Liam with finality, and sat down with a thump next to Niall. Harry rolled onto his back at their feet, and looked up at them. Niall’s expression -- a queer little smile -- was not any more parsable from where Harry was lying. Liam tried to step on Harry’s face, and laughed when Harry squawked and rolled away, before turning back to Niall. “What’ve you got for us now, then, Nialler?”

*

A few days later, the cold, crisp wind cut right through Harry’s coat and stung at his ears as they emerged from the warmth of the studio building into the frigid, late January night. Harry pulled his hat down over his ears and shoved his hands as deep as they would go into his coat pockets, clenching his right hand around his car keys. the rest of the lads had already gone to satiate Zayn’s sudden craving for kebabs, but Harry had begged off; he already had some chicken defrosting in his kitchen. Niall had excused himself too, ruefully citing the commute back to his digs.  

Harry felt a sympathetic pang as he watched Niall shrink into the collar of his leather jacket, the tip of his nose and ears turning red rapidly. “Hey, Niall, I’ll drop you off home if you want.”

“Nah, mate.” Niall smiled. “There’s need to go out of your way!”

“What, you’re not living in Surrey or something now, are you?”

“No!” Niall said, laughing. “I uh, I’m sleeping on a couple of friends’ sofa right now, near that pub in Vauxhall?”

“Wait ... your drag bingo friends?”

A trio of ridiculously good-looking men had come up to their table in the King’s Arms sometime after Simon had departed, and proceeded to fuss over Niall. One of them had turned out to be Paddy, who had been very drunk, and very tactile, and very proud of the fact that they were the reigning drag bingo queens (his words, not Harry’s) of the neighbourhood.

“Yes,” said Niall. “Is that a problem?”

“No! Not at all!” Harry wondered if he was veering into ‘the lady doth protest too much’ territory here. he hoped not; it was not at all the signal he wanted to send to Niall. “It’s just, you know, I’ve got a spare room since Nick fucked off to amsterdam, you’re absolutely welcome to stay with me. There’s a real bed for you to sleep in and everything.” He’d have to clean out the rest of nick’s stuff -- maybe take it all down to the charity shops on the high street -- and turn over Nick’s mattress to make sure there weren’t any drugs stashed under it, but it was worth it to get Niall away from Paddy and his inebriated affections.

He was very distantly aware of the ridiculousness of his thoughts, but Niall just sort of -- scrambled his usual processing circuits.

Niall gave Harry another one of those long, blank looks, his mobile mouth pressed unnaturally still. Then another gust of wind whistled through the buildings rearing up on either side of the street, and it seemed to make Niall’s mind up for him as he shivered violently. He smiled tentatively at Harry and said, “That sounds amazing, actually. I’m probably going to do my back in if I sleep on that sofa for much longer.”

“Oh,” said Harry, warmth blooming in his chest as he led the way to his car. “Well, we can’t possibly have that.” He chanced a glance to his side and tripped over his own feet at the smile Niall was giving him. Niall caught him with an arm across his chest and one on his waist, two points burning through Harry’s coat.

“Do try not to die before we get there,” said Niall, and Harry bit his tongue on protest at Niall letting go of him. “I’d hate to have to call the Met.”

“Ugh, no,” Harry shuddered theatrically. “Don’t.”

They made it to the car without further mishap on Harry’s part, and sat in companionable silence as the car’s radiator juddered into life, warming up the interior and defrosting Harry’s fingers. It was as they were inching south across Vauxhall bridge, the MI6 building looming on the opposite bank, that Niall turned to Harry with great deliberation.

Harry spared him a fleeting glance, not daring to take his attention off the road. “Yes?”

“You wouldn’t mind terribly if I, uh, followed you home tonight, would you?” Niall asked.

Iit was a bloody good thing congestion was happening, because Harry might have driven them right off the bridge and into the Thames.

“What?” he squawked, and then recovered as quickly as he could. Niall’s face had just drawn into itself, rather than fallen, which would have been just about bearable. “I mean, no, of course I don’t! I just ... I need to clean out Nick’s room and tidy up and ...”

Niall scoffed, “Christ, mate, there’s no need. I’ll help you out with that, I mean, this is a favour you’re doing me. ”

Harry gripped the steering wheel tightly as they finally made it off the bridge and turned right onto the A3036. Nothing about this was Harry doing Niall a favour. “Well, if you say so. Where to from here?”

“Wandsworth road, and then keep left. I’ll tell you when we get to their street.”

The conversation lapsed again, Niall tapping out a rhythm on his thighs and absently humming the melody from one of their new tracks, till he broke off about 600 metres later and said, “Now! Now!”, making Harry panic and almost miss their turning. He parked along the road and followed Niall up the pathway to the council block his friends stayed in.

“I really do appreciate this, Harry,” Niall started up again in the stairwell, and continued talking over Harry’s protests. “No, really, because Ian’s got his boyfriend over tonight, and I really didn’t want to have to listen to him bumming him again tonight. Not that I’m opposed to the act, but ... just the noise.”

“...Ah,” said Harry. “Well, that’s fair.”

Niall flashed him a smile over his shoulder. “Knew you’d come round in the end.”

*

“I’m sorry it’s such a mess,” said Harry. He hopped up onto the pile of coats and scarves on the shoe cupboard to let Niall and his bags pass by him and into the foyer, then got down to lock the door. “I wasn’t expecting, um, a new flatmate so soon.” He turned around and almost walked into Niall’s back.

“It looks great,” Niall said, spreading his arms. His fingers touched the walls on both sides. “I like all the little pictures. Very fancy.” He nodded at the little framed photographs and drawings that lined the foyer walls.

Harry laughed a little, shrugging out of his coat and hanging it up on the coat rack Liam had nailed lopsidedly into the wall. “Yeah, Zayn did those drawings. He calls this space the vestibulum, because he’s a nerd and did a Classics A Level.”

Niall hummed a little in acknowledgement, and took off his jacket to hang up too. “Better than me. I never went to college. And who did the photographs?”

“Ah,” said Harry, and fidgeted a little. “That would be me.”

“Really,” said Niall, and bent closer to the wall to look. “They’re well nice.”

“Ah,” said Harry again. “Um. Thanks, I’m going to ... go turn on the heating?”

Niall turned his head to give Harry an amused look. “Are you asking my permission?” His smile tugged wryly to one side, and Harry felt deep in his bones that this had been a very bad, very impulsive idea.

“You just ... carry on. I’m going to go turn on the heating. And start dinner.” Harry fled the foyer.

Niall found him in the kitchen a little while later, stuffing his defrosted chicken thighs with couscous, and whistled appreciatively. “That looks amazing. Is there enough for me?”

Harry grinned over his shoulder at Niall, shaking his curls out of his face. “More than. Have you found your room?”  

Something probably essential in Harry’s chest seized up when Niall scrunched his face up and said, teasingly, “Oh, I don’t know. This place is like a palace, how could I ever possibly find my room?”

“Watch it, Horan,” Harry said, “I’m the one making you dinner here.”

Niall let out that cackling laugh, falling back against fridge with the force of it. Harry covered his chicken with aluminium foil and shoved it in the oven, taking advantage of having his back turned to Niall to smile fiercely enough his cheeks hurt. Schooling his face back into a slightly more moderate expression, he turned back round and pretended to kick at Niall as he went to the sink to wash his hands.

“Sorry,” said Niall through his dying laughter. “I know, one ought never to tease the chef.”

“Damn right,” said Harry, drying his hands. “Now let’s go sort out Nick’s mess while the chicken’s cooking.”

“It didn’t look that bad,” Niall followed Harry out of the kitchen. His bags were lined neatly along the wall outside his room-to-be. “I mean, I thought there’d be piles of rubbish and smell, the way you were talking about it.”

“I aired it out a few days ago,” said Harry. “And he took a lot of his stuff with him. Likes his material goods, does Nick. I’m just worried about what he might’ve left behind.”

There was a pause. “I feel like we should be wearing hazmat suits, or something.” Niall stepped gingerly around a brown stain on the carpet. “What the hell was that?”

Harry snorted out a laugh. “Nothing so bad ... I hope. That stain’s just tea Louis spilt last year, if you would believe it. Come on, you take the closet and I’ll take the desk and shelves. Then we’ll turn over the mattress together, yeah?”

“You’re the boss,” Niall shrugged, and went to the closet.

They filled three cardboard boxes Harry had got from the local Sainsbury’s, including the stuff that Niall had bravely swept out from under the bed with the broom, and carried them into the living room.

“I’m not normally a clean freak, I swear,” said Niall, “but you wouldn’t happen to have cleaning stuff on hand, would you?”

Harry laughed. “Yeah, I do -- and I don’t blame you, really. Let’s just do the mattress and have dinner first, yeah?”

There weren’t, astonishingly, any drugs under the mattress; the flex of Niall’s arm and shoulder muscles did go rather to Harry’s head though. He had never been gladder to hear the oven timer go off.  

“Food!” cheered Niall, flinging up those damned arms. He walked all the way to the kitchen like that, which just went to show that there was no rest for the wicked.

*

Zayn raised an eyebrow when Niall walked in through the studio doors, right on Harry’s heels. He raised the other one when Niall flopped down next to him on the sofa and groaned, “God, my whole body aches.”

Trying very hard to tamp down on the heat in his cheeks, Harry sat carefully on the edge of the sofa and clarified, “We were cleaning out Nick’s room yesterday night.”

“Riiiiiiiight,” said Louis. “Of course you were.”

“It was foul,” Niall said. Harry thanked all the gods and deities out there for Niall’s obliviousness. “I think I scrubbed that room from top to bottom and vacuumed every inch of it before I felt like I could actually sleep in there.”

“Didn’t you help, Haz?” Liam asked reprovingly.

“He fed me,” Niall said before Harry could respond. “And it was good stuff, too.”

“Oh, yeah, the nosh at Chez Haz is always good,” Louis said, then paused. “Wait, hang on. You’ve moved in with Harry?”

“Yeah!” Niall nodded eagerly. “The flat’s really nice.”

“He was sleeping on a sofa in Vauxhall,” added Harry. “And I had a room to spare, so ... you know. Always good to have someone chip in on the rent.”

“Of course,” Zayn said drily; the first thing he’d said since they’d arrived. “You’re the very soul of generosity, Harry.”

Niall blinked, sat up, and looked around at them suspiciously. He then slid closer to Harry and put his arm around Harry’s shoulders. “He did save me from a hideously uncomfortable sofa and listening to my friends fuck, so lay off him, you lot.” Harry ducked his head and realised belatedly that the appropriate response would have been to pretend to swoon and declare Niall his hero.

Too late -- looking at them with amusement, Louis played a sassy little mordent on the piano. “Well, look at you, Horan, getting all protective. Sure Harry hasn’t Stockholmed you?”

Harry could feel Niall sort of -- puffing up next to him, and wished very dearly that he could lean away and see what Niall looked like when he was proper indignant; he leaned in instead and forced a laugh. “That’s not how Stockholm Syndrome works, you idiot.”

“Well, actually, Harry --”

Louis was interrupted by Zayn thoughtfully saying, “That would be an awesome lyric. Or title. ‘That’s not how Stockholm Syndrome works.’”

“Well!” Liam said brightly. “As it happens, Zayn and I were knocking out this drum and bass line before you two came in.”

The “and distracted everyone” was very heavily implied. Good old Liam.

“Are we writing a song about me moving in with Harry?” Niall asked, delighted. Harry was still tucked against his side, and it was getting to be slightly unbearable. He’d have to build up his tolerance for Niall’s maddening tactility really quickly.

Pausing in the act of getting up from the sofa, Zayn shot Harry a wicked look and said, “Well, that’s really up to Harry,” before continuing on his way to where Liam was sat at the drum set.

Harry bounced up off the sofa, pointing to a random corner of the room. “I’ll just ... go read up on the Stockholm Syndrome, then?”

He hurried off without waiting for a reply, which was just as well, because Niall’d just taken it in his stride and was already telling Louis, “... because I think it ought to be a ballad kind of thing, not like -- like a Vampire Weekend thing, which you’d expect from the title, right? It’d all depend on Harry’s lyrics and the rhythm section this time, I suppose, but it’d be fun to like, play against expectations.”

“I want a piano solo,” Louis said, apropos of nothing. “I’m gonna do a Lang Lang in the middle of this and you can’t stop me.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” said Niall solemnly, and when Harry looked down at his notebook he found that he’d drawn a series of sad stickmen.

***

These were the things that Harry was learning about living with Niall:

Every trip to their neighbourhood Co-op would inevitably involve the acquisition of bacon and Guinness, neither of which he could really fault. Harry generally preferred ales to stout -- leaving aside the empirical fact that Guinness wasn’t so much a stout as a food group of its own -- but it made Niall happy, and bacon was an essential part of one of their morning rituals that had quickly fallen into place.

Harry shuffled into the kitchen one of the first few mornings to Niall leaning back against a bar stool and poking desultorily at the sizzling skillet. The smell of crisping bacon wafted across to him, and then Niall produced a pan of sliced tomatoes and mushrooms from the oven, and Harry fell a little bit in love. With the breakfast.

“Legend,” he’d told Niall one of those mornings, early on, when cooked breakfast by the time Harry made it out of bed and into the kitchen was a thing that seemed to be set to repeat. He’d said it through a mouthful of eggs, so maybe that accounted for the strange look on Niall’s face. Harry’d swallowed and repeated himself. “Legend. Don’t restrain yourself on my behalf.”

Even the toast was just right, and Niall and he had only just started living together. And they had a dodgy toaster that burnt the bread half the time.

“You like it, then?” Niall had asked, smirk tucked into the corner of his mouth.

Flapping a hand at him, Harry’d grumbled out a, “Fuck off. No, don’t.”

He remembered, very clearly, that Niall had smiled at him then. The warmth of it had been washed out by the weak watery winter sunlight, and it had settled into Harry’s sleep-slow bones anyway.

And Niall had continued making breakfast, just like clockwork. He was, Harry supposed, one of those bizarre morning people. He wondered, for a brief and uncomfortable moment, if Niall maybe minded, but then reason suggested that Niall being who he was probably didn’t tend to do things he didn’t want to.

There was a comfortable lassitude to these mornings, anyway; the radio buzzing low in the background as they nursed mugs of tea; Niall reading the paper and Harry languidly doing the washing up. Then Niall would stretch out and crack his back, fingers interlocked and arms curving behind his head, and that would be their unspoken signal to go get dressed and ready for a new day in the studio.

*

Niall couldn’t be trusted to drive home after recording; that was the second thing Harry learnt. And very quickly too, after the second time Niall fell asleep at the wheel on the way back. It became a guilty pleasure: waking Niall up after he fell asleep on the way home from recording in East London. Getting to lean over and shake him by the shoulders, or poke him in the face, or tickle him -- getting to see Niall scrunch his face up and, on one memorable occasion, push his hand into Harry’s face like a fretful toddler whilst blinking slowly into dozey wakefulness -- all in the guise of the good old laddish prank.

“It’s wicked seeing you like this,” Harry told Niall honestly once, curling warmth in the pit of his belly. It hadn’t been so long, but already he was an old hat at skirting that line between truth and perception.

“Fuck off,” Niall grunted, shoving his ungloved hands into his coat pockets.

“I mean,” Harry continued brightly, “you’re worse than I am in the morning.”

“I hate naps,” Niall said, miserably. “They make me feel like I’ve just had the flu.”

Harry tousled his hair in as matey a manner he could manage. “Chin up, man. You’ll feel better after some dinner.” And Niall did brighten up at that, too.  

*

Thing the third was getting used to having a personal supply of Niall-hugs, which were a uniquely warm and comforting subspecies of hug.

“I’m aces at hugs,” Niall had told him one day as he was carefully searing some salmon. Harry had hummed in vague agreement, attention mostly on making sure the fillets didn’t burn. “Harry,” Niall had said insistently. “Haven’t you had a hug from me yet?”

“Maybe.” Harry turned the fillets over and flinched away from the hiss and pop of fat. He wondered, briefly, why Niall was bringing this up. “I must have. We’re all quite physically affectionate.”

“Well, yes, but --” Niall went quiet behind his back.

The fish was nearly done. “Could you pass the plates, please?” Harry asked. “They’re warming under the grill.”

“Fancy.” Niall huffed out a laugh, before his pale arm appeared in Harry’s peripheral vision, plates sliding dangerously from his hand onto the countertop.

Harry lifted the skillet off hob. “Thanks,” he said, turning to transfer the fish onto the plates. He stopped abruptly, having found himself suddenly nose-to-forehead with Niall.

There was a brief, awkward pause, then Niall shouted, “HUG TIME!” and snaked his arms around Harry’s middle, squeezing hard. He was a block of solid warmth down Harry’s side, and he’d pressed his face into ... essentially Harry’s armpit.

“Niall,” said Harry slightly breathlessly. “Niall, I have to check on the potatoes.”

The potatoes were boiling merrily away in a saucepan, and the sauce for their fish was keeping warm in the latent heat of the oven.

“Okay,” said Niall muffledly, and slid round to hug Harry from behind.

Harry didn’t quite know how to tell him to stop without hurting his feelings, and it wasn’t like Harry didn’t like it, so he finished preparing dinner with Niall attached to him like a limpet.

That seemed to have been the start of the Styles-Horan household tradition of hugs all the time -- hugs for Harry while cooking lunch, dinner, or any other meal that wasn’t breakfast, hugs when Harry was apparently looking particularly morose, hugs when Niall wanted them. They only seemed to really happen in the flat; Harry thought perhaps Niall didn’t want to make the others jealous.

*

The fourth thing was actually Niall learning something about Harry. They didn’t have much time, outside of recording, for anything but sleep and food, or the band bonding trips down to the pub. But when they weren’t watching a game on the telly in their studio’s local, then Harry and Niall were at home yelling at television whenever there was a game on.

“You know,” said Niall one evening, after watching QPR get razed by the Rovers. “I’d never have expected you to know so much about football.”

“Excuse me?” Harry squawked.

Niall laughed nervously, which was obviously a result of Harry’s righteous indignation. “I mean, I don’t know, I sort of thought it would be cricket for you. Or rugby. You know.”

“I don’t even understand cricket!” Harry said. “And you like rugby.”

“Fair enough, fair enough,” said Niall. His palms were turned outwards in between them, placating. “It’s just, you know, your accent, especially compared to the other lads.”

“Well, I only like football. And I’ve been working class all my life.”

Niall looked around the flat meaningfully.

“My mum just married up a few years ago, that’s all,” Harry said defensively. “My step-dad’s really nice and supportive of the whole music thing, okay? We’ve voted Labour forever!”

“Okay, okay,” said Niall. He laughed a soft, snuffling thing. “I’m sorry I assumed.”  

“You should be.” Harry threw a cushion at him; Niall caught it and hugged it to his chest, hooking his chin over its fraying edge.

“Well, I’m terribly sorry. Whatever shall I do to make it up?” He mockingly pled, widening his eyes.

Harry looked at Niall, saucer-eyed and pouting. It felt a little like being punched in the gut. “Well,” Harry stalled. And then he grinned. “You could take out all the rubbish. And remember to leave it next to the tree across the road, or the council will never pick it up.”

Groaning, Niall got to his feet and threw the cushion petulantly at Harry. “You’re bloody heartless, mate.”

Harry sang ‘Heartless’ at Niall as he dragged his feet out the door, bursting bags of rubbish in either hand so he couldn’t even flip Harry off.

*

A month into Niall and Harry’s adventures in cohabitation, everyone piled into the car after recording. They’d wanted to have a party earlier, but what with one thing and another --

I’ve got yoga,” Liam had improbably said one day, and

“Hana’s parents are coming up for a visit,” Zayn apologetically said the week after, and

“I need time to plan the menu!!” Harry protested

\-- it was four weeks before the rest of the band got to have their house re-warming party.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” Louis said, when Niall opened the front door with a flourish.

The walls of the foyer had remained unchanged in over a year; they were still papered over in the damask print from before Harry had moved in, and the framed prints were all exactly in the same positions.

Niall, leaning in from the corridor beyond the foyer, grinned impishly. “I know, it’s all thanks to me, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry said drily, and swept as best as he could past Niall in the narrow entrance. “Anyway, you’ve all actually been here before, so. You can sort yourselves out.”

“We’ve got new rules now, actually,” added Niall, walking backwards so he could talk to the lads like a tour guide. “You’re now obliged to cheer for Ireland when we watch the rugby, and for Derby County when we watch football. There is to be no cricket discussed at all, and golf only on Sundays. And Harry’s not allowed to make breakfast.”

Liam looked down at the United jersey he had on, and raised an eyebrow.

“Oh, well,” Harry heard Niall say as the others followed him into the living room. “You’re excused this time.”

“How magnanimous,” Zayn said. There was a stunned little pause as everyone, presumably, tried to figure out what that meant. Harry’s bandmates were mostly idiots; he’d made his peace with this a long time ago.

“Is that a word?” Liam asked, sounding lost. “Why do you use big words, Zaynie?”

“There, there,” said Zayn.

Harry shook his head and held his handful of beers out to Liam, who took a bottle gratefully.

Louis was ignoring them all, his attention stolen by the amp and the guitar accessories scattered around it, in one corner of the living room. “What’s all this stuff?” he asked.

“Oh,” said Niall, walking over to him. “Pedals -- that’s my wah wah pedal, got it third hand from my old guitar teacher, should bring it in tomorrow --, moisturiser for my fingerboards, um, oh, those are spare strings. My stuff’s been migrating to the studio, though, so this is all ... just gathering dust.”

“I think I vacuumed up something important the other day,” Harry said suddenly, eyes going wide. “Shit.”

“Ah, well,” Niall said easily, reaching out for a beer. “Can’t have been that important if I haven’t noticed.”

Harry had seriously, in those few panicked seconds, been considering emptying out the vacuum just to have a look. So grateful was he for Niall’s terminally easygoing nature that he gave Niall two bottles of beer.

“Oi! Stop playing favourites, Haz,” Louis protested and swiped the last beer Harry’d been holding onto. “It isn’t an attractive quality in a man at all.”

“Don’t be jealous, Louis,” said Zayn lazily. He was sitting on the sofa, had twisted the top off a Chilean red, and was drinking straight from the bottle. “It’s their special flatmate bond, eh?” And then he winked a terrible, salacious wink at Harry, which made Niall cackle.

“Classy,” Harry managed, feeling his ears burn. “Are you going to share any of that?” He made to leap onto Zayn, but was forestalled by Niall pushing a bottle into his hand.

“There,” said Niall, “Now we all have a drink. Can we put the game on now?”

*

Niall’s easygoing nature was turning out to be terminal -- for Harry.

The pot roast Harry had put in the slow cooker that morning was long gone, as was the alcohol they’d laid in the night before. The game was long over too, some late-night rerun of Peep Show playing in the background on Dave, and everyone was in a tangle of limbs on the sofa, except for Liam and Harry. Liam had got up at some point to put their dishes into the sink to soak and had -- according to him -- ‘accidentally’ done the washing up. By the time he got back to the living room, 2001:Space Odyssey had finished, the blob of Louis-Zayn-Niall had oozed across the sofa, and everyone was warbling along to Steve Tyler.

Ever obliging, Liam had sat down in front of someone’s knees and wailed along, rather ironically, about not wanting to miss a thing.

Harry, rather of the same mind as the song, was perched bird-like on the ottoman salvaged from his sister’s old flat, watching Niall intently and inebriatedly. He appeared to be in that liminal space between tipsiness and drunkenness; he was aware of the imminent loss of control but not quite there yet, his head feeling light and his body loose, the part of his attention not focussed on Niall devoted to keeping him balanced atop the ottoman. He felt a little like a bird on the wires, swaying with the wind. Perhaps he was actually drunk. Niall had very blue eyes and a particular way of scrunching up his face for emphasis.  

“What d’we watch next?” asked Zayn plaintively when the movie ended. “There’s so much on iPlayer.”

“Put on Graham Norton,” demanded Niall. “We missed last episode because of recording.”

“All right,” Liam said and crawled to where the laptop lay, at Harry’s feet.

Harry looked at Liam from his lofty perch. “I could’ve got it.”

Liam blinked up at him. “I’m sure.” He navigated to the Comedy section of iPlayer and fastforwarded to the bit where Graham Norton made his pitch, standing amongst his audience, and crawled back to sit between Louis’ legs.

“Zayn, mate,” said Niall, turning suddenly as Gorgeous American Celebrity #2 started talking about his filming experience in Moldova and displacing Louis from his shoulder in the same movement. Louis, being the pliant, heavy-limbed drunk that he was, slid half off the sofa and onto Liam, who yelped but caught him anyway. Harry thought he’d rather like to take a photograph of them like that, except his phone was far away on the coffee table. He wanted to know what Niall was going to say to Zayn, too.

Zayn turned to Niall, too, and they were a good few inches too close to each other. Harry tried beaming Hana’s disapproving look into Zayn’s brain. Niall’s cheeks were flushed with drink and only drink, Harry hoped, and the look around Zayn’s eyes told Harry he’d be having all four of them to breakfast the next morning. He hoped Zayn made pancakes, and that Zayn moved a little bit away from Niall’s face. He hugged his calfs and propped his chin in the little valley between his knees, watching through his fringe.

“Yeah, bruv?” Zayn drawled, reaching out to grip Niall’s arm. He missed a little, and it turned out a little more like a caress, but Zayn -- being Zayn, and pretty well lashed -- just rolled with it. “What?”

Niall blinked slowly. He looked down at Zayn’s hand on his arm, at where Zayn was absent-mindedly stroking his thumb over his skin over and over again. Harry found himself caught by that little motion, all else in his vision blurred as his eyes fixed on it. There was a roiling in the pit of his stomach as he waited, and waited for Niall to say something.

The roiling stilled and turned cold when Niall said, “I just thought you ought to know, like, you’ve got a really good face. Right up there with that dude on telly.”

“Aw, Nialler. Thanks!” Zayn beamed and flung his arms around Niall, tugging him closer. He really was unfairly gorgeous. Harry’d never really resented Zayn for it before; one may as well resent the sun its warmth, but he supposed, as he dug his nails into the soft denim of his jeans, that he’d never had cause to before. “You’re pretty cute too.”  

“Uh,” said Niall, flush turning hectic, as Zayn nuzzled his ear. He looked a little confused, and his eyes darted to Harry. Harry peripherally noticed Liam and Louis switching their attention from the television to Zayn get handsy with Niall.

Enough, Harry was dimly aware of himself deciding, was enough. He unfolded himself from the ottoman, stumbling a little as pins and needles made themselves abundantly evident when he stumbled across the short distance to the sofa. It was so funny that mere moments before that distance had seemed unbreachable.

“All right,” Harry heard himself say brightly, and saw his hands tug at Zayn. “I think you’ve had enough, Zaynie. Time for bed. Sorry about him, Nialler, you’ll get used to it.”

The sour resentment under his ribs eased slightly, and Harry came back to himself when Zayn willingly came, letting Niall go and flinging his arms around Harry’s waist instead. “Harry!” exclaimed Zayn, pushing his nose into Harry’s belly. “Niall thinks I’ve got a good face!”

“Him and the rest of the world,” sighed Harry, trying to pull him up.

“D’you think Hana thinks I’ve got a good face too?” asked Zayn, and Louis stifled a laugh somewhere in the background. The telly’d been switched off, either by him or Liam. “I’m gonna call her.”

“You really don’t want to, babes,” Harry said, petting his hair. “Come on, bed time, we have to pull the sofa bed out. Liam, come help me with this idiot.”

Niall’d at some point got to his feet as well, and Harry so badly wanted to look at his face, but couldn’t make himself. What if he was -- disappointed? So Harry made sure Liam was holding Zayn up and busied himself with helping Louis wrestle with the sofa bed.

“Oh,” said Harry, when he straightened up and saw Niall collecting empties. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I do live here too, you know,” said Niall wryly, a twist to his mouth. It seemed to come completely out of the blue. Harry hated being under the influence at times like this; everything became magnified, everything took on greater significance. Despite himself, his heart plunged and it seemed that the room stilled for long, dilated seconds.

“I know that!” Harry said, stricken. He accepted the load of pillows and blankets from Louis, stepped aside to let him get on with making up the bed. “I’m just not used to ... okay. Yes. Thank you.”

Niall blinked and cocked his head, before shrugging lightly. Harry hated the little smile Niall hauled onto his face when he said, “You’re welcome, I suppose. Going to put these in recycling and go to bed. Good night, lads.”

“Night, Nialler!” chorused Liam and Louis, who’d managed to coax Zayn into bed and out of calling Hana. They’d done it by taking Zayn’s phone away from him, but still.

“Night,” echoed Zayn quietly, already near sleep, after Niall had left.

When Harry looked away from the doorway, Liam and Louis were looking at him.

“What?”

“Go to bed, Haz,” Louis said, surprisingly gently.

“It’ll all be fine,” said Liam. “Now go away.”

Harry went, shutting the door firmly behind him

*

Harry woke up none the wiser, and with a sort of roiling nausea in his gut. The smell of fried bacon wafting into his room from the kitchen did not help one bit. Cautiously getting out of bed and shuffling down the corridor, a cold feeling of dread stole up from the pit of his stomach when he saw Niall’s back in front of the stove. He shifted his weight nervously from foot to foot in the open doorway of the kitchen, before deciding to make some tea.

The mugs clinked together on the mug tree, as Harry retrieved his, and he winced. They seemed unnaturally loud in the radio-less silence of the kitchen.  

“Oh, hiya,” Niall said, tossing him an absent look. His hair was flat on one side and sticking up the other, and the loose ends of his bathrobe belt flapped as he moved from toaster to table, setting down a plate of toast. “Breakfast’s almost ready.”

Harry continued making his tea, not quite knowing what else to do. He nodded towards the living room and winced as his head throbbed in protest. “Are they still asleep?”  

“Nope,” said Niall, popping the ‘p’. “They’ve been and gone.”

On a normal day, Niall would’ve added a teasing “lazy” at the end of that, or a “you layabout”.

“Ah,” said Harry. He shifted again, waiting for the tea to brew. Abruptly, he asked, “D’you want some tea?”

“No thanks -- got me cuppa here.” Niall raised his mug with one hand as he poked at the bacon with another.

The milk was out on the counter already, and sweating enough to show it’d been out of the fridge for a while. Harry bit back on his complaint and unscrewed the green cap. They’d had an argument, or, well, a discussion about that very early on. Not just how long it was acceptable to have the milk out of the fridge for, but the fat percentage of their milk. Harry’d been used to skimmed milk and Niall to whole, so they’d compromised on semi-skimmed. Which reminded Harry - they’d had discussions about what bloody milk to buy, of course Harry would know Niall lived here too. What the bloody hell had Niall been on about?

Edging cautiously past Niall, Harry pulled the fridge open and put the milk back in it.

“Oh,” said Niall. “Sorry. About that.”

Harry blinked at him owlishly. “It’s ... all right? I mean. I’m used to it.”

“No it’s not!” Niall viciously turned off the hob. “And breakfast’s ready. Let’s eat.”

“Okay.” Harry paused. “Haven’t you had breakfast? With Louis and company?”

“Well I’m having a second one,” Niall snapped, before thumping the skillet down onto the cork pad on the table. “If that’s all right with you.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Harry asked, bewildered. He’d only ever seen Niall this agitated before whilst watching Derby County matches, and even then it hadn’t felt so personal.  

Niall darted a look at him, before shrugging expansively. “Pass the brown sauce, please,” he said, and rustled open the newspaper.

Harry passed the brown sauce, and was hit by the absurd sense of being in a ‘50s family drama. He made his own bacon sandwich and chewed contemplatively for a while, before swallowing it down with some tea.

“Niall,” he said carefully. “You do realise you haven’t got to make breakfast everyday?”

Niall’s head shot up from his careful perusal of the ... global news section, which he didn’t even read usually, and his eyes were for a moment shatteringly wide.

“I mean,” Harry continued hurriedly, “Do it if it makes you happy. Just ... I don’t mind either way.”

Cocking his head, Niall said, “You don’t?” His face was curiously blank again; Harry hated that expression. One day, he’d make it so that Niall would never have to make that face ever again. But first he would have to work Niall out.

“No, I mean. I like them! You just don’t have to make breakfast for me. If you don’t want to. I can fry bacon.” Harry stopped, because Niall was looking at him with the oddest look on his face. At least it was an emotion.

Then Niall shook his head and said, “You are an idiot, Harry Styles,” before getting up to make more toast for sandwiches. He was smiling a little, though, which made Harry’s chest feel about five hundred times lighter. “D’you want more toast too?”

Harry jumped to his feet. “Ah, no, I can do that! Or ...” he sank back into his chair. “You can if you want?” He really hoped breakfasts in the future weren’t going to be awkward.

Niall snorted, but his eyes were crinkled up. “Just let me do it, yeah? The toaster likes me more, anyway.”

“Yeah, well,” Harry said, his heart leaping.  “You’re a filthy ... toaster casanova.”

“You waste bread, scraping off all the black bits,” Niall scoffed.

“She used to work well enough for me,” said Harry. And then trying for humour, “And now you’ve stolen her affections right in my own home.”

It was only because he was watching Niall so closely that he saw Niall twitch. Damn, shit, fuck.

“I’m not sure if I should be more worried you’re calling your toaster a ‘she’,” Niall said lightly instead, retrieving their toast.

The slices of bread were, when Niall set them down on the table, evenly golden-brown. Harry’d never got the toaster to do that for him, even pre-Niall.

“You can’t ever leave,” Harry’s mouth said without his brain’s permission, and then he panicked inside.

“Oh?” Niall raised an eyebrow. He squeezed ketchup over his sandwich without looking at it. None of it went outside the bread, which was a miracle and a half. Harry was staring at Niall’s sandwich harder than absolutely necessary.

Harry felt his face go warm. “I mean, our toaster might abscond with you, and where would that leave me?”

Niall was squinting at him. Harry thought he rather deserved it. Then Niall barked out a short, sharp laugh and shook his head vigorously like a dog. “You’d survive, I think.”

Harry sighed, feeling very tired. “I wouldn’t like it much, though.”

“Hmmm,” said Niall, maddeningly, and bit into his sandwich. Harry watched him chew from under his hair for a while, before deciding that hiding in bed after breakfast was the best possible option. Retreat, valour, or however that idiom went.

*

Louis dragged Harry out on the lunch run, the Monday after the party. As they stood in the queue for the self check-out machines, arms full of five lads’ worth of Tesco Value Meals, Louis trained his interrogating gaze on Harry relentlessly .

“You know you’re going to have to tell me eventually,” said Louis reasonably. “You and Niall have been acting very oddly. Did you not sort it out?”

Harry heaved a heavy sigh, and shuffled up as the queue inched forwards. “I don’t know, it’s so -- I don’t even understand what he’s in a strop about. Except Niall doesn’t really do strops, does he? It’s just been so weird all weekend.”

“I can imagine. He’s usually --” Louis stopped suddenly, then, eyes narrowing. “Did you actually, you know, talk? On Saturday morning?”

“Sort of,” Harry said evasively. “And I’ve been ... it’s like, oh, I don’t know. I just want it to stop. Why did we ever have that party?”

“Well, you would’ve probably had a fight eventually anyway.” Louis shrugged. “Happens to the best of flatmates.”

“It doesn’t feel like a proper fight, though,” Harry complained. “It’s like, half-strangled and with me not actually knowing what’s going on.”

One of the self-check-out stations flashed green, and Louis sailed towards it, Harry following in his wake. Louis started efficiently scanning the boxes of sandwiches and said, “Well, it’s certainly not my place to tell you.”

“But?” Harry asked hopefully, passing Louis the bags of crisps and fruits snacks. Things not being his place had never stopped Louis before.

“But nothing,” said Louis. “You’re a grown lad now. I’m sure you know what’s wrong, you just don’t want to admit it to yourself.”  He bagged up the final bottles of Coke and pertly handed a bag to Harry. “Think hard, young Styles.”

*

Louis’s words bounced around his head for the rest of the day, distracting him enough that several pens were bounced off his hair in the course of recording.

“Harry,” said Jo, one of the sound engineers, her forehead wrinkling. “Get in the fucking booth, mate!”

When Harry wasn’t in the booth, singing his lines over and over, eyes closed and hand pressed to the headphones, he was mulling over what Louis’d told him. Louis was wrong, he decided; Harry didn’t know what was wrong. If Harry knew what’d gone wrong, then he’d be able to fix it, and he wouldn’t be treading so carefully around Niall. He sighed; maybe he ought to just do as Louis said and ask Niall what was up. He couldn’t help but feel that he ought to know already, though, and -- well -- what if it only made things worse?

He was jolted out of his thoughts by someone knocking against his chair, and froze when he looked up.

It was Niall, who’d apparently launched himself across the tech booth on his wheelie chair to crash into Harry’s.

“I could hear you thinking from over there,” Niall offered, smiling tentatively. For a very brief, very crazed moment, Harry thought Niall was psychic. He also wished Niall would just go back to smiling properly at him. Harry looked over at where Niall had launched himself from, and immediately wished he hadn’t; Louis was over there, waggling his eyebrows like the madman he was.

Harry smiled back. “I do think loudly,” he agreed.

“Well,” said Niall, “penny for your thoughts?”

Harry blinked quickly. “I should think my thoughts are worth more than a penny,” he said, casting furiously about for something to say.  Their not-fight wasn’t exactly recording studio conversation material.

To his delight, Niall’s mouth twitched, and then Niall let out a little bark of laughter. “All right, then, will a quid do?”

“I was thinking ...” Harry trailed off, distracted by Liam’s ridiculous falsetto face in the recording booth. Then he hit upon it -- “I was thinking that we sound really good together.” And they did; it’d been staggering, hearing Niall’s isolated harmony line under Harry’s melody, the way Niall’s tone melded with his own.

Niall gave him a sceptical look, before shrugging. “We do, don’t we? Good mix of vocal tones here. Too bad we don’t have a bass, though.”

“Ah,” said Harry. “I -- yeah, of course, but I sort of meant, um, the two of us?”

It was Niall’s turn to blink, before he grinned. “Yeah, we do, don’t we? You’ve got a really easy, like, tone to match. I like singing with you.”

Harry was glad the lights in the tech booth were turned down, because his cheeks had grown warm again. “Thanks,” he managed, and judging by the heights Zayn’s eyebrows had soared to, he was smiling pretty idiotically.

“It’s the truth,” said Niall, and bumped his shoulder companionably.

This was fine, Harry thought. Niall was fine. Everything was going to be fine.

*

“Well?????” Zayn texted him while he was making dinner that evening. Niall’d disappeared into the bathroom. Weird squeaking noises were coming out of it. Harry’d be more worried if not for the fact that he had vegetables to keep from burning.

“Well what?” Harry texted back with one hand.

“Have you spoken to him mate?”

“None of your business,” Harry typed back, and set down his phone to tear open the packets of Amoy noodles he’d got at Tesco during lunch time.

“I’M SERIOUS BRUV Ask nialler what’s up!.”

Harry poured the noodles into the wok and stirred vigorously with his chopsticks. They were long wooden ones Nick had got from one of the supermarkets in Chinatown a while ago; Nick’s boyfriend at the time had been Chinese and insisted on them having cooking chopsticks. Harry hadn’t even known those existed, but they’d turned out to be massively useful.

“Why’re you so invested?” he sent to Zayn.

“!!! you’re impossible. Just listent o me you fuckin twat.” Zayn sent back. Harry snorted and shook his head, before pouring in more soya sauce.  

“What’s so funny?” Niall asked from behind him, and Harry jumped, almost dropping the bottle.

“Just Zayn,” said Harry dismissively.

“Oh. That smells really good. I cleaned the bathtub, by the way.”

Harry almost got whiplash, turning around to stare at Niall. His hair was wet, his skin pink and damp, and clear plastic gloves turned inside out dangled from Niall’s fingers, as did a supremely scummy sponge.

“...I don’t think anyone’s done that since my mum last visited,” Harry said faintly.

Niall shrugged, shouldering past Harry to chuck the cleaning things in the bin. He turned around, leaning into the corner between fridge and counter. “‘s about time, then. Anything I can do to help with dinner?”

You could give me a hug, Harry valiantly didn’t say. “Wash your hands,” he said instead. “I’m nearly done.”

“All right,” Niall said, and squeezed past Harry again to get to the sink.

Harry picked up his phone. “He cleaned the bloody Tub!” he told Zayn. Niall hadn’t even done laundry yet, not for the entire month they’d been living together.

“Plates?” Niall asked, interrupting Harry’s thoughts. He had the cupboard already half open, head turned towards Harry.

“Ah, yeah, cheers,” said Harry, putting his phone down hastily, and giving the noodles a final stir. He took the wok to the table, chopsticks and all, while Niall followed behind with the plates. It felt so easy, so natural, that remembering that Niall was - or had been - upset with him was a little jarring.

Other than Niall’s murmurs of “this is good,” and Harry’s polite “thanks,” they ate in silence. Harry longed to break it, but the matter of their not-fight loomed so large in his mind that he couldn’t think of anything else to talk about. It sat like a heavy knot at the base of his throat, blocking any attempts at putting word to his tangled thoughts.

The sound of fork tines hitting the ceramic of their plates scraped across Harry’s nerves; he could stand it no longer, forced his mouthful of noodles past that damned knot, and opened his mouth to let whatever fall out -- “Niall,” he heard himself say.

Niall looked up from his plate, slurping up a stray noodle trailing from his mouth -- Harry suppressed a hysterical giggle. “Yeah?” His eyes met Harry’s very briefly, before Harry glanced away to the mug tree, then to the table.

“Why’d you clean the bathtub?”

“Uh,” said Niall, looking at Harry like he thought he was an idiot. “Because it was getting all scummy around the sides? And I thought we might like a bath one of these days.”

It was a frustratingly reasonable answer. Harry put down his fork and spoon and ground the base of his palms into his eyes.

“Oi!” Harry heard Niall say. Fingers curled round his hands and pulled them away from his eyes. “Stop that, it’s bad for your eyes. What’s up with you?”

“What’s up with me!” Harry exclaimed. “What’s up with you? Why were you all weird on Friday night?”

“The hell are we talking about that for?” Niall raised his chin, and his hands were curled into loose fists on the table.

Because it’s all weird now and I don’t like it; because I don’t like feeling like you’re pissed off with me, Harry thought.

“Because you’re being weird,” said Harry stubbornly. “And cleaning the bathtub when you haven’t done your laundry in a month and you took out the recycling even when I didn’t remind you to and I want to know why.”

Niall blinked, speechless. “I’ll do my laundry,” he said eventually, when the pause had stretched long enough that Harry was feeling restless.

“That’s not - I don’t,” Harry waves his hands exasperatedly. “What did I do wrong?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Niall said.

“Well, then why did you say -- why were you so angry on Saturday?”

“I had a hangover,” said Niall, his face still.

“You did not,” Harry said, outraged at the obvious lie. “You never have them!”

Niall screwed up his face, then, and let out a great sigh. “It was just something you said on Friday night -- you probably don’t remember, and I’m probably being silly, anyway.”

“No you aren’t,” said Harry, firmly in his contrarian mode now. He paused. “Hang on, what did I say?”

“Nothing much --”

“Niall,” said Harry. His heart had started pounding; adrenaline, probably.

Niall sighed again. “I just felt a little -- I mean, you’ve all been mates for so long, right? And it was like, you all knew what to do with Zayn and Louis knew where the linens are kept and I just wanted to help, and it’s ... I don’t like having bottles messing up my - the living room anyway, but then you said I didn’t have to, like I don’t live here too, so.” He stopped, abruptly, pressing his lips together.

“Oh,” murmured Harry, “Niall.” He was sorting through what Niall’d said as quickly as he could, and there was so much to say -- of course everyone knew what to do, yes they’d been mates for ages, the living room was Niall’s too, he did live here, Harry was sorry -- that he didn’t know where to start. Or how to start. He wondered, too, if this were the first time Niall was allowing anyone a glimpse beyond his cheery stolidness, and felt abruptly a fierce satisfaction at that thought. Inappropriate, maybe, but still.

“I’m sorry, I just wasn’t used to having someone else pick up,” Harry said, deciding to start from the end. “I mean, Nick was such a shit flatmate --”

“I’m not Nick,” Niall interrupted.

“I know, and I’m ... there’s no way I’d confuse the two of you. You’re a far better flatmate. He never cooked me breakfast.” Harry felt like someone’d kicked him in the brain then. I just wanted to help, Niall’d said. “And not everyday, too,” he added.

Niall bit his lip and shrugged. “It’s the least I could do.”

“You don’t,” Harry stopped, and passed his hand over his face, thinking hard. “You don’t owe me anything, Niall.”

“I rather think I do, actually,” said Niall, just shy of sharp. He deflated a little, at Harry’s involuntary flinch. “I’d still be busking and playing in a pub if it weren’t for you.”

“We’d still be missing a guitarist and a great mate if it weren’t for you,” Harry countered. “Honestly, the band’d be absolutely lost without you.”

Niall shrugged again, but his face had relaxed a little, and his shoulders were less tense. There might or might not be a little smile tugging at the corner of Niall’s mouth.

Harry blew at his fringe. “I just wish you didn’t feel like that.”

The smile unfolded into a wry quirk of Niall’s lips. “Yeah, well.” He picked his cutlery back up.

“Are we all right, then?” Harry ventured, following suit. He thought so; it already felt like a great, stifling weight had sloughed off his body. The knot was mostly gone from the base of his throat, and his heart was slowing back down.

**  
**“Yeah, Haz,” Niall said, and gave him a real smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks K for your encouragement and cheerleading and, oh, I don't know, embroiling me in this fandom. I'm sorry I got over it. 
> 
> Everyone else: if you've read this far, thanks for reading! I've basically fallen out of the fandom, but had managed to write THIS MUCH OF A WIP before work overwhelmed the fandom out of me, and didn't want it to go to waste. I've sketched out the rest of the story, but am not sure if I will finish it. Either way, I think this part fulfils AN emotional arc, so hopefully it suffices. 
> 
> [Hana Tajima](http://hanatajima.com/) is a real lady and she's lovely and probably too cool for Zayn IRL.


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